> As a result, nuclear is orders of magnitude safer than anything else
How exactly is nuclear safer than solar or wind? Solar panels in particular are about as dangerous as an inert rock.
How exactly is nuclear safer than solar or wind? Solar panels in particular are about as dangerous as an inert rock.
The only two others that even come close: Fukushima - one death, TMI - 0 deaths.
So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite).
There is plenty of data and the data says it's safe.
Sounds about right, but when you factor in current designs and requirements it's 100x better.
LRF (large release frequencies) are required to be less than 1 in 1 000 000 per year of reactor operation [1], so roughly 10 billion reactor hours. The calculation of this considers at least 1 in 10 000 year levels of high winds and earthquakes [2].
Since the typical reactor is 1GW, so ~8TWh per year, and global energy consumption is ~23 000 TWh per year, we could use roughly 3000 reactors globally to meet most of our needs, which would put an event like this roughly every 100-1000 years.
[1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0909/ML090910608.pdf
[2] https://archive.opg.com/pdf_archive/Nuclear%20Licencing%20Do...
For Chernobyl the number is 4,000 deaths as the total number of projected deaths caused by the accident over the long term.
For Fukushima it's one direct death, and 2000 deaths due to evacuation.
Had we approached dams the way we approach nuclear power, not a single dam would be built in the world.
Nuclear has this same issue too, although almost entirely from the concrete poured for the containment building. Small modular reactors should mitigate this.
Regardless it’s apples to oranges. You are comparing your solar output to the mix of fossil fuel power the grid supplies. But a small modular reactor would be a carbon-zero power source.
Nuclear is also a very risky business (not in the sense of safety but in the sense of project delivery/nimby). So solar and wind are derisking weaning off fossil fuels.
just wait until they are abandoned by bankrupt companies and start to break down and all of the highly toxic substances they are made of leech into the ground water.